These Pieces of Me
by flowerpicture
Summary: The Stendan reveal.


**AN: This takes place after *SPOILER*Brendan beats up Ste next week*SPOILER*.**

**::: ::: :::**

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

Brendan's been counting. 213 drips from the leaky tap since he last tried to call him.

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

He hasn't seen Steven since yesterday, since he did the unforgivable, the one thing he swore down to his very soul he would never, _ever_ do again. But he did do it: a lightening-strike of anger, done and over in less time than it took for anyone to notice. Done because he _could_, not because he had any goddamn reason. He's got no excuse. Doesn't want one.

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

More than a day later and he still can't think of the look on Steven's face. Every time it swims into his memory, he wants to slash his skin open, break something, crack his own bones in punishment. But punishment means redemption, and he's got no right to that.

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

This room is cold, lifeless, and Brendan stares around at it with numb detachment. The last time he was in this room, it was full of Steven's laughter. A crap film on the TV and his legs in Brendan's lap. Brendan looks around now and thinks of goodbyes. He's never going to see this room again.

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

All he can do now is look Steven in the eye, face up to what he's done. He doesn't deserve to run, cowardly, weak and pathetic, because he's not tough enough to hear Steven say it in person: that it's done, there's no going back for them. He wants Steven to scream at him; he wants Steven to hurt him. He wants to feel anything, any last thing, to remember Steven by, and pain is all he's entitled to. So he'll take it.

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

The front door opens, and Brendan's heart stops. He sits there for a moment, watching Steven enter, eyes glued to his phone, thumb moving over it rapidly. He doesn't notice Brendan until he stands from the couch, hands behind his back, submissive.

Steven freezes in the entryway to the living room, slipping his phone back into his pocket in slow, calculated movements. "What are you doing here?" he says carefully, and he looks wary. But not scared. That's something. "You're not supposed to be here."

But Brendan can't focus on anything other than what he's done to Steven's face. The marks, the bruises, the venom he's imprinted on Steven's beautiful skin. He takes a step forward, no idea why, and Steven steps back in response, hands rising, _don't come near me_.

"I'm not gonna hurt you again, Steven," Brendan tries, but it sounds hollow even to his own ears. Weak.

Steven laughs, bitter and cold. "Think I've heard that before. And look where that got me."

Brendan doesn't know what to say to that. Steven's right. Brendan's empty promises, smashed in an instant of blind rage. And for what?

"So tell me what I did to deserve this one then," Steven's saying now, voice laced with ice and hatred. It cuts Brendan deep, but he welcomes it. "What lesson were you teaching me this time?"

"Nothing. You did nothing." It disgusts him, how cynical he's made Steven. That Steven even has anything to compare this to, presumes Brendan has his _reasons_, and that Steven needed a lesson. Makes him want to heave. "This is all on me."

"Is it?" Steven scoffs, disbelief lacing his tone even as he bares his teeth in subdued anger. "We're not gonna go back to how it's because your dad knocked you about twenty years ago?" He knows Steven doesn't mean it, but it slices at him all the same.

"Have you been to the police?"

Steven gives him a level stare. "I should."

"Go." Brendan nods, encouraging, _you can do the right thing, Steven, I won't stop you._ "Do what you gotta do. I deserve to be punished for this."

"Who do you think you are?" Steven snaps, and Brendan can see he's seething, red-hot blood bubbling under the surface, his anger restrained—already so much more of a man than Brendan could ever hope to be. "Poor little boy Brendan," he mocks, "got caught being naughty and now he needs his mummy to ground him.

"Steven—"

"Getting you arrested isn't punishment," Steven says, tone suddenly icy again. His eyes are like steel. "But this is."

"What?" He'll take it, whatever it is.

"Losing me." Steven smiles then, and Brendan's never seen anything so unpleasant. "What we had, what we could've had—gone, like that." He snaps his fingers, the sound echoing through the silent flat, bouncing off the walls and making Brendan wince.

He wants to throw up, bend over right now and retch, drag up his guts. He knew this was coming, has been waiting all day to hear it, but now he's faced with it, faced with losing him—

"Now tell me," Steven continues, goading him now, that twisted smile spreading into a grin, "how does that make you feel, Brendan? Does it make you wanna lash out?"

"I'm sorry—"

"Or do you not even care?" Steven finishes, and suddenly, painfully, he sounds absolutely heartbroken, his voice cracking on the final words and his breath hitching. He's not smiling now, not even close.

"Of course I care," Brendan says desperately, and Jesus, what he would give to cross the room right now, press his palm to Steven's cheek and pull him in. But he's not here for that. He's here to make things right, in the only way he knows how. "But I'm not here to get you back."

"Right." Steven nods, takes a deep breath. Looks as though he's hanging on by a thread. "Right, I get it."

"Not because I don't want it," Brendan rushes to say. "I've never wanted anything more in my life, Steven. I've got no clue how I'm supposed to go on now without you. But I'll have to, because we were wrong. We were both wrong." He pauses, and Steven frowns, waiting for the explanation. "I haven't changed. I can't. And I'm not gonna put you through it anymore." He swallows past the thick, jagged-edged lump in his throat. "I love you too much for that."

It takes Steven a moment to answer, and his face gives nothing away. "You've got no right to play the martyr right now, Brendan."

"I know—I'm not. I'm not trying to make you feel sorry for me. Pity is the last thing I want from anyone."

"So you're pushing me away instead."

"No. I'm removing myself from your life," Brendan says, and his words are heavier than steel. "I'm toxic."

"Yeah, you are."

As much as it hurts, Brendan has no ground on which to stand, nothing to dispute in what Steven says. So he stands there, and he listens, and he takes it.

"That darkness inside you, Brendan—I thought I could handle it, right. I thought I was strong enough. But I can't keep paying for the bad things that happened to you." Steven sniffs and wipes a hand over his eye. Brendan didn't see a tear, but Steven's never had any trouble showing his emotions. Until recently, Brendan thought he was learning from him. "So yeah," Steven continues, "you're doing the right thing for once."

"I understand," Brendan says, because what else can he say? Beg for forgiveness? For another chance? Even if he knew Steven would say yes, he's not prepared to do that to him.

"And I'm sorry," Steven says, shocking Brendan into taking a step forward.

"For what? Jesus, Steven, you've got nothing to apologise for."

"I do," Steven says, nodding, and his broken smile now is more painful than anything Brendan's heard so far. "Because I made you a promise. I told you I would never give up on you, and that's exactly what I'm doing right now."

Brendan shakes his head. "I haven't given you any other choice."

"Maybe not," Steven says with a shrug, and he sounds so resigned, so lost. Brendan doesn't know what to do. "But I probably should be fighting harder for this."

"Steven—"

"But I can't. I haven't got the strength anymore. I love you so much, right—I didn't even know it was possible to love this much. But it's not enough, is it? I'm not enough."

"Jesus, Steven—"

"I'm not worth you changing, not completely. I'm just not worth it."

"Jesus fucking Christ." Brendan shoves both hands into his hair, feeling like his veins are splitting beneath his skin, his bones shattering under the weight of guilt. "I can't believe I've done this to you."

"It's hardly the first time," Steven says hollowly.

"Not the violence, Steven," Brendan says, shaking his head. "I can't believe I've made you feel like this, made you doubt yourself, doubt how I feel about you. Steven, you—you're _everything_ to me. You're my whole reason for existing. No one and nothing will ever come close—

"Stop it." Steven puts a hand over his own eyes, not quite quick enough for Brendan to miss the tears gathering in the corners, threatening to spill. "I don't wanna hear this."

"You have to understand," Brendan says desperately. "You're the only thing standing between me and total self-destruction. Without you—I'm nothing of a man. Nothing."

Steven lowers his hand, his eyes red under the strain of not crying, of not giving Brendan what he probably thinks he wants. Brendan doesn't want Steven to cry over him, not even for a moment. He wants to be hated and forgotten, because that's the only way to fix this.

"Then why do this to me?" Steven asks, pointing at the bruises on his face, and god, the betrayal in his voice is too much to bear.

"I'm broken," Brendan explains, nodding, trying to supress his natural instinct to hold everything back. "I can't be fixed. I was broken as a child and I've spent the rest of my life trying to put myself together out of the pieces my dad left behind. But it's not working. He destroyed too much of me, leaving me as this—this rotten shell of a man. And I've tried. Jesus, I've tried. You came along and crawled under my skin and for the first time I thought—I thought here's the one person in the whole world who found the good left in me, brought it out and kept it safe. But that poison—that poison, Steven. It's just too strong. I can't fight it. The only thing I can do now is protect what's important—and all this love I have inside of me for you, I can protect that. And I can protect you. But it means never having you. Or this poison will infect you too."

When he finishes speaking, Steven looks stricken. "You need to get yourself some help," he says, and he sounds terrified. But not for himself. For _Brendan_. "Please."

"I've tried," Brendan says with a hollow laugh. "And here I am, still destroying everything."

"No one should—" Steven attempts, shaking his head when he can't finish his sentence. "Thing is, Brendan, I get you were knocked about by your dad, and I'm sorry he humiliated you, but this… It shouldn't have ruined you this much. This isn't—this isn't _healthy_." He sounds for all the world like for the first time he doesn't know who Brendan is. And that hurts more than anything else. "There is something wrong inside you," he says, deep worry creeping into his voice. "And you need help to find out what that is."

"I already know what it is," Brendan admits, because what else is there left to say? "No one can help me. No one ever helped me," he says, breaking eye contact for the first time. "Not when it counted."

There's a red flush crawling up Steven's neck, contrasting with the sickly white his face has become. "Tell me."

Brendan screws his eyes shut. "Steven—"

"Don't you think I've got the right to know?" And he's the one taking the step forward now. "Whatever it is, you've been making me pay for it since the beginning. After everything, I deserve to know why, Brendan."

He's right. Of course he's right.

"I don't want to put that weight on you."

"I can handle it." Steven spreads his arms wide. "Even now, I'm still here. That should tell you something." When Brendan fails to respond, he adds, his voice softer now, so sincere it chips at Brendan's heart, "It's not gonna change how I feel about you. At this point, I don't think anything will." He looks Brendan directly in the eye and takes another step forward. "I'm in too deep."

Brendan swallows, trying not to panic, to let fear take over. "It'll change how you see me."

"It might," Steven agrees gently. "Or it might help me finally understand you. And that can only be a good thing, Brendan."

He heaves a sigh, a deep breath down from the very bottom of his lungs. There's a weight trying to crush his chest, trying to keep it all in, and he fights against it, fights for Steven. Because Steven needs this. "Can we sit?"

Steven gestures at the table, and they take chairs opposite each other, no touching, no contact, no anything other than Steven gazing at him expectantly, nervously, from across the table.

"Right," Steven says, his voice shaking just enough for Brendan to hear it, "tell me." He sounds as if he doesn't want to hear a thing.

Brendan clears his throat, folds his hands together on the table between them, dips his head low and stares at the grain in the wood. He's trying to bring words up, to force sound through his throat, but nothing's happening. And Steven doesn't push, doesn't prompt him; they sit in silence for ten seconds, twenty, while Brendan swallows past the obstruction in his throat and gathers every bit of strength he has lurking in the blackened cavities of his body. "When I was eight years old," he begins, voice tight and cracked, "my dad—" He stops and shakes his head, flashing back to memories of telling Mitzeee, of swallowing that bitterness and then letting it out and dying, inside, when she told him he was a good man. The product of Seamus Brady will never be a good man.

His whole body jolts when one of his Steven's hands covers his own on the table, and he daren't look up, isn't brave enough to see what's going through Steven's mind right now.

"Go on."

Brendan nods, because he can do this, he _can_. For Steven, if for no other reason. For Steven. "When I was eight, my dad—he… He raped me. For the first time." His ears fill with sudden white noise, blocking out everything but the heavy thud of his heart, the rattle of strained air in his lungs. The room's suffocating him, and Steven's hand on his is suffocating him, and he can't move, can't look up, can't do anything until Steven speaks.

"For the first time," Steven repeats, but it doesn't sound like him; sounds robotic, inhuman, devoid of anything that betrays emotion. Brendan wants to look up, really wants to look up, but he's not a brave man.

"Yeah," he says, and clenches his hand into a fist. Steven doesn't let go. "Yeah. It became a regular thing." A laugh bubbles out of him, frayed and jagged, and it's as if he's opened the tap, because he's spoken now, he's got it out there, and now he can't _stop._ It comes tumbling out, word after word, and he wants to stifle it, wants to protect Steven from it, but he can't, he can't, it has to come out. "All the time. But I…I learned how to deal with it after the third time. It became a mantra, when I was lying there, watching him lock the door. _Don't fight, don't speak, close your eyes and don't open them._ He did it quicker, if I didn't fight, and there was less—less pain. He'd pat me on the head and I could get up after, go back to playing with my little army men, and it wouldn't hurt anymore, not like—not like it would if I'd tried to make him stop. It was…it was better that way.

Steven makes a noise, a broken noise, but Brendan's not finished yet, can't stop it.

"But every time, I felt it—another little bit of me cracking, breaking. And there came a point where I didn't feel anything anymore. I was just numb, and everything in me was dark and cold and… Every time he hurt me, whenever he got too rough—that was the only thing I ever felt. For years. And I—"

Steven wrenches his hand from his and jumps to his feet, stumbles down the hall. Brendan watches the back of him as he goes, his own throat raw with the broken edges of his story, and he doesn't get up until he hears the painful sounds of Steven violently throwing up into the toilet.

He stops at the bathroom door, caught between wanting to comfort him, and wanting to run far away, far enough that he will never have to deal what he's just revealed.

"Steven—"

"I've had him in my house." Steven's retching even as he speaks, gagging into the toilet bowel. Brendan can only see the back of his head, but the skin of his neck is paler than moonlight. "He's been around my _kids_."

"I'd never let him hurt your kids. I'd die before that happened."

"Oh god—" Steven groans, and then he throws up again.

"I'm sorry." Brendan shuffles away from the door, every inch of his skin itching with the need to get away from this. "I shouldn't have—"

"Don't you dare leave now, Brendan," Steven warns, slumping back against the bath and wiping a hand over his mouth. His face is slick with sweat. "Don't you _dare_."

Brendan nods, powerless, stood uselessly in the bathroom doorway while the man he loves gasps for breath, sickened by words Brendan let spill in their home, in their living room. Tainting the heart of their life together. "What—" he tries, clears his throat when his voice cracks. "What do you want me to do?" Because right now, he would do anything.

Steven grips the sink and pulls himself to his feet, turns on the tap and looks at Brendan through the mirror. His eyes are wet and red, and Brendan can't read them. "I want you to give me a minute," he says, cupping his hand and filling it with water before using it to wash out his mouth. After he spits, he adds, "And then I want you to stop thinking you have to deal with this yourself."

"No," Brendan says instantly, shaking his head. "I'm not pulling you into this." That's the last thing he wanted to get out of this.

"Too late," Steven says, but there's a softness in his tone. "Go and put the kettle on."

Brendan blinks, forgetting for a moment the icy pain he'd dug up and laid bare for Steven's inspection. "The kettle?"

"I need a coffee. A strong coffee." He grabs the toothpaste and his toothbrush, raising an eyebrow at Brendan in the mirror. "So if you don't mind…?"

And Brendan, without any idea how else to play this, goes into the kitchen and puts the kettle on. There's a self-preservation kicking in, because he can feel, just beneath the skin, the overwhelming need to collapse, cry, scream out more than twenty years of supressed pain, the torture of having to put Steven through it, make him so sick with the knowledge that his body physically expelled it. But he's not giving in; he's not cowering. He can take this. He can survive it, because that's all he's ever known how to do.

Steven grabs him from behind suddenly and turns him around. And the next thing he knows, Steven's pulled him into a tight, desperate hug.

Startled, Brendan can do nothing more than hug him back. "I'm not looking for pity, Steven," he murmurs into Steven's hair.

"Shut up, this isn't for you. You can give _me_ pity. I feel like hell now and I need a fucking hug, Brendan, so hug me."

"Okay, okay, Jesus," Brendan says, and hugs him tighter, wraps his arms as far around as they will go.

A moment later, he feels the wetness of Steven's eyes on his neck, but he doesn't say anything. Doesn't know how to put into words how it makes him feel.

"I'm sorry," Steven mumbles into his skin. "I just don't know how you—"

Brendan's pushing him away before he even realises he's reacting. "I said I didn't want pity," he says, watching Steven scrub a hand over his face. "This is why I don't tell people."

"You can't stop a basic human reaction, Brendan, get a fucking grip," Steven snaps. "God, all I can see is you, that little boy—and that _man_." His face crumples and Brendan tugs him back in again instantly, presses Steven's face to his chest, wraps an arm around his shoulders. Steven's voice, when he speaks again, is higher, muffled against Brendan's shirt, thick with devastating emotion. "My heart is _breaking_ for you right now and I'm trying to find the right thing to say—"

"Shh," Brendan soothes, rubbing the back of Steven's head. "It's okay, it's okay, I'm fine."

"You're not fine, though." Steven pushes away, allows Brendan to keep an arm around him but leans back enough to look Brendan in the face. He doesn't seem to care anymore that he's crying. "You've never been fine. All this time…" He stops, raises his eyebrows, his eyes filling with a new horror. "Cheryl, does she—"

"No."

His face collapses into pain again. "_Brendan._"

Brendan swallows. "I had to protect her."

"That's all you ever do," Steven says, shaking his head. "Protect people. Who protected you?"

Brendan pulls him in close again before he can give into the overwhelming pain trying to claw its way out through tears and screams and begging for an _end_.

"I'll understand," he mumbles into Steven's hair. "If this is too much for you."

"Oh don't start," Steven sighs, propping his chin on Brendan's shoulder, his body relaxing a little. "I was never gonna let you go, was I? Even before this."

"Then you're an idiot."

"Am I?" He doesn't sound surprised.

"Definitely," Brendan says fondly. He brushes his fingers over the back of Steven's neck. "But you're my idiot."

Steven doesn't respond immediately, until eventually he says, almost thoughtfully, "We're gonna figure this out, you know. You and me."

Brendan doesn't know what _this _is, but he believes him. And it's as if it gives him permission—permission to bury his face in Steven's shoulder and cry.

Steven doesn't let him go.


End file.
